Percival Zhang, a scientist at Virginia Tech, leads the team which is researching the enzymatic method of hydrogen production, which they claim now holds the current record for efficiency. (Source: Virginia Tech.)

New process emulates nature to yield most efficient hydrogen production yet

Now scientists with Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Georgia claim to have developed the most cost-effective and efficient hydrogen production process yet. In the new process sugar, water, and a cocktail of 13 power enzymes are combined to yield carbon dioxide and hydrogen under mild reaction conditions.

The research was reported before The American Chemical Society, a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress, which aims to further chemistry research and claims to be the world's largest scientific society. The research, according to the researchers, will help to eliminate the hurdles which the hydrogen economy faces-- production, storage, and distribution. By relying on sugar the latter problems could be solved and production would be as simple as using the researcher's production method.

Lead researcher Y.-H. Percival Zhang, Ph.D., a biochemical engineer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va states, "This is revolutionary work. This has opened up a whole new direction in hydrogen research. With
technology improvement, sugar-powered vehicles could come true
eventually."

Zhang and his fellow researchers are strong proponents of using biomass to produce hydrogen via enzyme catalyzed reactions. The researchers have succeeded already in catalyzing the reaction of starch, and believe they can achieve hydrogen production from cellulose as well.

In the groups experiments, starch from plant mass was combined in water with 13 different, well-known enzymes. The mixture was left to react at 86 F. The results was a mixture of pure carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The process produces less pollution than traditional energy production as it does not yield nitrate or sulfate pollutants. The new method is known as “in vitro synthetic biology" as it uses enzymes. While it did produce three times the theoretical yield of anaerobic fermentation, Zhang says much work needs to be done to up the speed of the reaction and further up the yield percentage in order to make it commercially viable.

The currently plan of attack for Zhang and his team is to look for higher temperature enzymes and carry the reaction out under a higher temperature, in order to increase the reaction speed. Enzymes are typically very temperature sensitive as they are normally proteins, which denature when in an environment with too extreme temperature or pH. The researchers also hope that by replacing several enzymes they can enable cellulose processing.

Zhang thinks that one day people will go to the grocery store and buy cellulose/starch packs to power their cars. These packs will be converted enzymatically into hydrogen, with little pollution, and carry the drivers to their destinations. Alternatively he states, a fuel-station style infrastructure could also develop.

How long until this technology is avialable? The team estimates that it will take 8 to 10 years to optimize the production to where it is competitive for automobiles, so don't hold your breath. The team also aims to create a scaled down version of the tech for small sugar-powered batteries for MP3 players and other small electronics. Its planned batteries will be similar to those developed by Sony or the methanol version champion by MTI Micro, which are being sold commercially next year. The battery technology will be deploying in a closer 3 to 5 years, so hopefully at least in the near future the realization of the technology will allow you to be rocking out to The Sugarcubes on your sugar powered MP3 player.

The research is being funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science of Virginia Tech.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Yes, ethanol was a massive mistake on many levels, especially government's role in perpetuating it. I live in Iowa where federal taxpayer money is subsidizing corn growers here under the pretense that ethanol is a way to get us off of foreign oil. So government decided to spend our money on what they thought was best (ethanol) instead of letting us decide where the money should go. That's capital taken away from investment in companies developing better methods and spending taken away from producers of other renewables. How many times does this have to happen before people wake up and get government out of the free market? I want to outfit my home with geothermal and get an Aptera. Too bad I can't afford either because of inflation and taxes going to pay government salaries and the companies they choose are best for us. I'm not a child, give me back my money!